Christian Love! by J.C. Ryle

fall, has been restored

fall, has been restored to it, however feeble and imperfect the restoration may appear. It is a "partaker of the Divine nature," by union with Christ and sonship to God; and one of the first features of that nature is love. 2Peter 1:4 Such a heart is deeply convinced of sin--hates it, flees from it, and fights with it from day to day. And one of the prime motions of sin which it daily labors to overcome, is selfishness and lack of love. Such a heart is deeply sensible of its mighty debt to our Lord Jesus Christ. It feels continually that it owes to Him who died for us on the cross, all its present comfort, hope, and peace. How can it show forth its gratitude? What can it render to its Redeemer? If it can do nothing else, it strives to be like Him, to drink into His spirit, to walk in His footsteps, and, like Him--to be full of love. "The love of Christ shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Spirit" is the surest fountain of Christian love. Love will produce love. I ask my reader's special attention to this point. It is one of great importance in the present day. There are many who profess to admire love--while they care nothing about vital Christianity. They like some of the fruits and results of the Gospel--but not the root from which these fruits alone can grow, or the doctrines with which they are inseparably connected. Hundreds will praise love--who hate to be told of man's corruption, of the blood of Christ, and of the inward work of the Holy Spirit. Many a parent would like his children to grow up unselfish and good tempered--who would not be much pleased if conversion, and repentance, and faith, were pressed home on their attention. Now I desire to protest against this notion, that you can have the fruits of Christianity, without the roots--that you can produce Christian tempers, without teaching Christian doctrines--that you can have love which will wear and endure, without grace in the heart. I grant, most freely, that every now and then one sees a person who seems very charitable and amiable, without any distinctive Christian religion. But

such cases are so rare and remarkable, that, like exceptions--they only prove the truth of the general rule. And often, too often, it may be feared in such cases the love is only apparent, and in private it completely fails. I firmly believe, as a general rule, you will not find such love as the Bible describes, except in the soil of a heart thoroughly imbued with Bible religion. Holy practice will not flourish without sound doctrine. What God has joined together, it is useless to expect to have separate. The delusion which I am trying to combat, is helped forward to a most mischievous degree by the vast majority of novels, romances, and tales of fiction. Who does not know that the heroes and heroines of these works are constantly described as patterns of perfection? They are always doing the right thing, saying the right thing, and showing the right temper! They are always kind, and amiable, and unselfish, and forgiving! And yet you never hear a word about their religion! In short, to judge by the generality of works of fiction, it is possible to have . . . excellent practical religion--without doctrine, the fruits of the Spirit--without the grace of the Spirit, and the mind of Christ--without union with Christ! Here, in short, is the great danger of reading most novels, romances, and works of fiction. The greater part of them give a false or incorrect view of human nature. They paint their model men and women as they ought to be, and not as they really are. The readers of such writings get their minds filled with wrong conceptions of what the world is. Their notions of mankind become visionary and unreal. They are constantly looking for men and women such as they never meet--and expecting what they never find. Let me entreat my readers, once for all, to draw their ideas of human nature from the Bible, and not from novels. Settle it down in your mind, that there cannot be true love without a heart renewed by grace. A certain degree of kindness, courtesy, amiability, good nature--may undoubtedly be seen in many who have no vital religion. But the glorious plant of Bible love, in all its